SMOL Tanks - Part 1

I don't just go see movies! I do paint stuff sometimes.

It's been literally years since I picked up a paintbrush. I didn't take the time to set up my painting space and because of that I didn't paint. I wanted to paint but didn't have anywhere to paint. It's a vicious circle. Eventually I had some help and did the work myself to make an area on the paint desk where I can reasonably work. I also set up for streaming while I was working on the desk. That's a whole 'nother topic.

I also had cataract surgery this year. When I'd healed up I sat at my desk, pulled on my Optivisor, and promptly freaked out because I couldn't focus on the mini I was going to paint. Turns out that the changes in my vision meant my trusty magnifying visor didn't work anymore.

Side note on that one regarding cataract surgery. They replace the little bag of clear goo in your eye with a plastic lens that has a serial number. One thing you lose is the ability to auto-focus, to squint and change your focal length. Squinting only gives me a headache now and I'm training myself not to do that. To top it off I chose distance lenses so I'd need glasses for reading but not for driving. The way the surgeries turned out I can see up close but need glasses for driving, really for anything more than six feet out if I want clarity. Turns out successful cataract surgery means your vision is correctable to 20/20, not that it will be that.

I pondered the vision thing and came up with a solution. I use my distance glasses to correct myself to 20/20, then add magnification on top of that. I tested it with the visor, it worked, now I have magnifiers that clip onto my glasses. I can now paint but I'm honestly not sure what level I'll be painting at yet.

Back to the tanks.

I asked my friend Randy to print some as he was winding down his printing for ReaperCon and because I don't have my resin printer going at the moment. Randy has a resin printer with the big bed so he printed a hella lot of tanks for me.

I got these from a Kickstarter because who can resist teeny tanks? They go with a ruleset the developer has been making. They're in two pieces - the tread and the turret. The turrets determine the model stat line. The treads hold turrets. Since there's a number of turret options Randy printed me a variety of turrets. A lot of variety of turrets.

The entire tank body is about the size of a regular d6 when you put them together. They're so cute! That picture shows an assortment of them I was cleaning up at the convention. I was removing support marks and I had to file down the peg on the turrets to fit the tread holes. I don't know if that was a model design or printing issue. Regardless, filing it resolve it.

There's a fair bit of detail on these but once you get into them you can find where they're variations on the same theme. The designer used the same turret base and modified them into different weapon systems for the most part. That's fine. It means more assembly line painting styles.

After counting things out I have enough to make ten sets of tanks. The game rules are for 1 to 4 tanks. I have more than forty treads but there's four styles and after sorting them out it turns out I can make ten different colored sets of treads. That's the color that will matter in game because I'm not dealing with having four of each turret for each set of tanks. That's just nuts. So look at the tread color for the army.

I've gotten to the point of putting all the metallics on the pieces. As you can see there's a lot of pieces. Some of them are metallic right over primer, some are black with metallic on top. It all depended on the piece I was painting. But all of them have been done with the silver and brass colors. Yes. I had to pick out details in brass. Sue me.

That's where I left things. Next up will be the white undercoat since I'll be using bright colors and I need to clean up where there's metallic and black overpainting. I know I could just touch up those spots but then I'd have two different whites under the colors and I simply can't have that.

I don't know quite what to do with the missiles. The tiny missiles on the tiny tank turrets. There's a few different versions of them - just the nose showing, the top third/half of a missile. and full missiles. When you're at this scale you need to be careful about how detailed your painting is because it's easy for what looks good up close to be less good or lost on the tabletop. I know the bodies will be white. It's the missile detail that's making me ponder my options.

I plan on getting to the white this week and it will take me a while because I'm in no rush and I'm learning what I can do again. My hands work just fine, thank goodness. It's the sight thing that I'm learning. Oddly enough I can get a brief moment of sharper focus my opening my eyes really wide. I don't get that.

I also need to decide what ten colors to use on my treads. White and black aren't options for me. Certainly the primary and secondary colors, which make six. There's this great electric blue that Vallejo makes I might borrow from the store for a set, which makes seven. I have so much paint that I'm not at all concerned about finding three more distinct colors.

Until I have something more exciting than the same picture above but with a more solid white I'll go back to reviewing movies. I'm making myself finish these before doing some ork skin color tests I've been champing at the bit to do. But nope. Gotta finish the project I've started. Willpower!

Song Sung Blue - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Of course I was going to see this one, even though I'm still annoyed at Hugh Jackman. I lucked out in that it was the Screen Unseen, which to me seemed a little odd. They'd been hyping this movie way too much for me not to be suspicious of it in the first place and to have it take an "unseen" slot was both odd and a lie. There had been an advance screen the previous day at Dolby cinemas so it had been seen. Well. It wasn't released so maybe that's the technicality.

Anyway. On to the movie stuff.

The first trailer had this being a fun romp of a movie. The second trailer hinted that it was going to be darker than that. I'm pleased to say they made this a movie rooted in people. It could easily have turned into cardboard cutouts all around but they pulled it together around the family motif.

I will say that making Hugh Jackman look like a middle-aged guy from Milwaukee in the late 1980s was a feat to pull off and they did. But the poor guy can't seem to get away from being made to wear muttonchops. People talk about him wearing bad wigs but they never saw the hairstyles, and lack thereof, in that time period.

The funny thing that people are saying the most improbable events of the movie bother them but those events really happened. They're not pointing out the things that were done to adapt the real-life story into a movie. If you want the full real-life story, go watch the documentary that inspired this movie.

Mike and Claire are both small time musicians and they pair up, both musically and personally. They click in both areas. They're both struggling and divorced. She's got custody of her two kids, his ex has custody of his daughter. They work on their combined show and combining the families.

Things are sailing right along when the second act tragedy kicks in. Claire gets injured and has a problem with pain pills. Mike is struggling to keep the family together, to keep her together, and keep himself together. They don't hide the dark issues that come up and they show that people break.

Their act was barreling along before the accident and then after Claire gets the help she needed they eventually do get back on stage together. By this time they're so in tune as a duo (ha ha) that Mike can't go back to his solo career, although he tries. Claire wasn't able to do any of it but when Mike breaks down she wants to try.

They do the work to come back and get their biggest break.

Time to interrupt our story for another part of the story. Mike's got a bad heart. They show him having small heart attacks a couple of times and powering through them. There's a good, if made up for the drama/humor, scene when Claire is brought into the emergency room after her accident when he needs her stepdaughter to help him through one. There's more than a bit of foreshadowing here.

Their big break is a major, sold-out show. Earlier in the day Mike has a heart attack in the bathroom and hits his head on the counter. He patches up the bleeding scalp wound with superglue (he was a Marine (I know there's no former Marines) and he's a mechanic so he'd know to do that) and doesn't tell anyone. He has a brief episode before they go on stage and another one during the performance. Yes. Foreshadowing all around although the one during the performance is well twisted so you're not quite sure if it's what it is.

After their show they're going to meet Neil Diamond. When they get to the place Mike isn't responsive. They cut to the funeral so it's pretty clear what happened.

One of the things the movie doesn't do is give clear time references. There's one scene with a desk calendar but there's no sense of how long things happen. There's no telling how long it took to get their initial music group popular. There's no telling how long Claire was in rehab. There's hints of it but nothing more. And that lets things happen organically in the movie because they don't need to spell it out.

There's been some criticism about the death situation. The real Mike died from complications from the head injury after lingering for a few days. The implication here is that Mike died of a heart attack in the car. But they stick with the lack of time reference so we honestly don't know what happened in the car and how long between that and the funeral. Nor does it matter.

I liked this movie. I liked the way it centered around people and how complicated things can get. Sure, seeing Hugh Jackman in tidy whiteys was amusing. Even he can't make those look good and they were smart enough to pair them with a long t-shirt so you only get to see a little underneath that. You see some bare chested Hugh and again it's done properly - costume fittings and when he's passed out on the hospital floor after unbuttoning his shirt (for a real reason). Mike walks around without pants. It happens.

I'd say this is a good movie. It's going to be one of those ones you watch once in a while when you need to lose yourself, shed a few tears, laugh, and hear some good music. There's nothing wrong with that.

Zootopia 2 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I'll use the same review I used in my very brief online ones on Facebook: "Perfect sequel. No notes."

This one picks up the week after the first movie. Nick is on the police force now, partnered with Judy. They're kind of a publicity stunt but they're still working together.

This story is about reptiles. We know there's no reptiles in Zootopia. They said so in the first movie. But there are and this is about what happened to them. There's also a side plot for stirring up discontent between prey and predator animals.

This is a buddy-cop movie and follows it down the line. The partners, the problems, the sidekicks. All of it. It's well done and if you like the format of movie, you'll like this one.

The new characters are all fun and I hope that if there's a third movie (yeah right, like there won't be) that they continue to have roles. Even the side characters should stick around, if they can afford the actors who provided the voices.

There's any number of reviews out there that go into the social dynamics this movie covers so I won't bother with that. There's a lot of them and I don't feel like detailing them this long after seeing the movie. Like the Wicked movies it's on theme with turning people against each other so the more powerful people can do whatever they like. I'm not surprised this theme is heavy this year, to be honest.

The movie gap between the first and second is nine years but the movie itself really does have the feeling of continuing right where it left off. The continuity on that is great and since I watched the first one the week before seeing this one it really stood out for me.

The movie hints at the other missing genus - birds - in a little bit at the end of the movie. It's not exactly a subtle thing either. It's the plot of the entirely expected third movie.

Wicked: For Good - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I waited to see the first movie until this one came out. I have no interest in waiting a year to see the second half of a movie. They rereleased the first one (not on IMAX) so I could see it in the theater, which was nice.

I've never seen Wicked. I'm not a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz movie. I've read a couple of the books and they never grabbed me. So this is all me and just about the movie, or movies since I'll have to refer back to the original Wicked at times.

The whole movie is about politics. Then again so are the books. Anyone who complains never got the point of the whole thing. The Wizard manipulates the people of Oz so that he can continue to do as he likes. He's good at it and has good help. People want to believe him, because to do otherwise means calling so much of their behavior into question.

This movie picks up with Elpheba on her campaign to expose the wizard as a fraud. She's the one he's using to unite the people against a common enemy. Glinda is powerless but is presented as the foil for the evil that's out there. She's kind of aware of her role as mouthpiece but also doesn't seem to mind it because it gets her the attention she craves.

I was working on going through the plot points here but got myself tangled up. Pretty much it's the bad witch, who can do real magic, and the good witch, who can't do magic but has excellent PR as a foil. Add in the prince who was going to marry Glinda but ends up going with Elpheba, only to be pretty much beaten to death by his own troops as a traitor.

Elpheba and Glinda are still friends through this. Glinda wants Elpheba to stop being evil. Elpheba wants to get Oz out of the grip of the wizard. They work together when they can.

The tinman is a munchkin that Elpheba's sister almost killed witn trying to use the spellbook but Elpheba scrapes out a spell to keep him "alive" without a heart.

The scarecrow is the price that Elpheba wanted not to die. If you think about it not having a brain means that while you can't live you can't die. Something like that?

The cowardly lion is the cub that Elpheba and the prince rescued in Wicked and set free. He's been used as an example of what happens when people don't treat animals as animals.

So all three of those were created by Elpheba and have a good reason to go after her when the wizard gives them their quest.

The tinman and the cowardly lion are kind of abandoned in the story at this point. The books go on with their stories but the movie used them to show the Dorothy band setting off and then set them aside. Which happens when they're not main characters.

Glinda works with Elpheba to stage her "death" by Dorothy. The wizard is exiled from Oz after finding out that Elpheba is his daughter. Elpheba and the prince-scarecrow leave Oz to live a new life. Elpheba seems to have given Glinda the ability to do real magic. Good wins all around.

The sets are just as brilliant. The songs are kind of forgettable. The characters seem to peter out in development as their stories are wound up. I have to agree with the bulk of the reviews that say this one isn't as good as the first movie. It feels too crowded and rushed. The character development that was done in the first movie stalls out here since they're coasting on what they've got.

I find it funny that people are giving the costumer grief for a grey knitted sweater Elpheba wears (the "sex sweater" since that's what she puts on before she and the prince have sex). I liked it. It was a nice shift from her wearing all black to moving to grey. In a way I think it's the best way they showed character development in the whole thing.

Fackham Hall - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I'd seen the trailers for this and then it was the Screen Unseen so I figured I scored - no need to use another of my movie slots for it. From the trailers it looked like a reasonably fun broad satire of English aristocracy in the time of Downton Abbey. I was half right.

Don't get me wrong. I like satire. I like an occasional broad easy-to-digest movie that's full of sight gags, pratfalls, and misunderstandings. They're like Tom Clancey books - no surprises and mind mulch for vacations.

I was to be disappointed.

The opening shot is a fancy car pulling through a big fancy gate to a big fancy house - Fackham Hall. Underneath that seems to be the family motto: "Incestus ad Infinitum" so yeah, it's gonna be broad humor and gutter humor.

Again, I can enjoy those if done well. Not everything has to be nuanced. The problem I had with this movie is that it never seemed to decide what it was going to skewer with the satire. They took a scattershot approach that left everything floating on the surface of truly beautiful sets - kind of like oil over a scenic pond. The pond is not improved by the oil nor was the manor house improved by the script.

I get it. It's satire. It's not supposed to be a literary masterpiece. But what I expect from a movie is some kind of coherency. That's where it falls very short. With their unfocused approach and habit of returning to jokes to the point of them being more eye rolling than amusing this movie, well, blows.

It has all the things they were looking to skewer - inbreeding in the aristocracy, the rebellious daughter, the runaway daughter, the obligatory "odd animals being shot out of the air", the requirement to marry a first cousin or the family is kicked out, the missing family member who lied about their age and ran off to fight in the war, the street urchin turned scoundrel, etc. There's so much of it that nothing comes into focus.

I'll give you the rundown, as much as I can remember it. I'm woefully behind on my movie reviews.

The scoundrel is given a job to deliver a letter to Fackham Hall. Yeah. In the affected accents you know exactly what that sounds like. The younger daughter is going to marry the first cousin to save the family. The older daughter refused to do it. The scoundrel is mistaken for someone applying for a houseboy type job and gets hired, without delivering the letter. The family member that lied about his age and went to the war is shown in flashbacks to be a toddler in an officer uniform. Ha ha, right?

Cue the scenes of sight gags racking up with the younger daughter running out of the church to go away with what seems to be the night soil collector, happily being treated like chattel, leaving the older daughter to marry for the sake of the family. The older daughter who has taken to the scoundrel, of course. The housekeeper takes a dim view of the whole thing. The father is murdered and the inspector comes in to figure it out. Or not. But it pushes up the urgency of marrying the first cousin.

The daughter has a roll in the hay with the scoundrel. The housekeeper sees them going into the barn. She decides to use that as a way to frame the scoundrel for the murder. The older daughter agrees to marry the cousin. The priest again (this is one place where they definitely went back to the same gag too many times when the priest reads the next word after a sentence to give it a whole new naughty meaning, then corrects himself) starts the marriage.

The scoundrel gets away because the police officer happens to be someone he met in the pub he took the oldest daughter to prior to the barn situation. He does get arrested, reads the letter, and finds out he's the older brother of the cousin. Cue farcical jail escape during the wedding. The housekeeper blocks him and relates what really happened to the father - a series of stupidly done actual accidents that ended up killing him (he fell onto the letter opener to stab himself, etc.) but he gets past. The two of them get married. All is sweetness and roses.

Of course she still married her cousin. In the credits where they show how each family member ended up the younger sister bucked tradition by marrying a SECOND cousin. Hilarious.

I wanted to like the movie. I was ready to give it a very fair chance. However they made it impossible to do so by, well, making a bad movie.

Rental Family - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I love Brendan Frasier. Always have, always will. It's his smile. It gets me every time. He's also a darn good actor who was done dirty.

This movie lets him ooze his shy charm over everything. I would almost think they wrote the role for him due to how well it matches his style. I wouldn't be surprised. But it works for him.

He's a commercial actor in Japan so expect some of the required "fish out of water" situations both physically and culturally. He had one very popular ad job and he's been doing bit parts ever since. We open with him going to yet another audition and being told they'll get back to him. His agent tells him about another job while he's waiting to hear back from this one.

Cue some shots of him not fitting in - standing out, quite literally, from the crowd, fitting into the public transportation seats (yeah, movie poster), etc. He does speak fluent Japanese and has the cultural basics down cold. We find out later he's been in Japan for eight years and decided to stay there. Reasons? Unknown.

The other job is what the movie is about and addresses social issues in Japan. One of the big ones is loneliness. Another is their strict social expectations. His first job is to be the American at a funeral. Americans are actually a status symbol in some Asian situations. Go figure.

He finds out the funeral was a set piece for the not-dead guy to experience the social ritual of the funeral he won't get because he's not of that status. Back at the office Phillip finds out more of what they do and why - they fill holes in people's lives. His first job is to be the groom at a wedding.

We find out that the bride has a same sex partner and wants to move to Canada with her so they can live in a way they can't in Japan. Her family knows but has to put up the pretense that she's marrying Phillip so not to be ostracized. It's an insight into the type of things he's going to experience.

We meet his coworkers who do things like pretend to be a mistress apologizing to the wife. It's actually called Apology Service. The man doesn't have to bring his real mistress to meet his wife but still gets the catharsis of the fake mistress apologizing for his mistakes. Cultural thing.

His main job is going to be pretending to be the father of a young girl so that she can get into an elite school. Single mothers have a stigma so she needs him to pretend to be the father who's around until the school interview. In preparation the mother wants to have him spend time with them so they seem like more of a family but also not tell her daughter that he really isn't her father, so that she doesn't spoil anything.

His other job has him pretending to interview an older Japanese actor because his daughter wants him to feel relevant. He's actually a fan of this guy so he's able to keep up the act and conversations. The man is getting forgetful, which means he can't get roles even though he's still famous.

OK. Enough plot detail. On to summaries.

The situation with the actor is that the guy wants to go back to his home province and have Phillip take him. His daughter won't do it. Phillip won't do it but does take him out for lunch. That's when he finds out that the guy wanders off. He does end up taking him to his home province so we get some lovely shots of unincorporated Japan. The actor has a heart attack and Phillip is arrested, accused of kidnapping him. More on this later.

The one with the kid is about the same. She warms up to him eventually and since she has no reason not to think of him as her father gets close. When the mother finds out she's upset and Phillip gets called on the carpet by his boss. Phillip gets upset because he's trying to do what he feels the company wants - for him to play the role. He gets schooled in how much to get involved.

The interview at the school goes well. The daughter is accepted. Phillip is told to take a hike. The daughter sees him on TV in one of his minor roles and finds out the truth. She eventually confronts him and they end up as friends. Heartwarming.

There's a small side story about him being hired by a guy to play video games with him. Over time the guy cleans himself up, the two of them clean his house up, and they end up doing things outside the house too. This is another loneliness thing in that this guy is buying a friend. It's both sad and relatable.

As the story progresses we find out the owner of the company has hired himself a wife and son to be waiting for him when he gets home every night. He's the same as any of their customers and the strain of the false situation finally has him realizing just how messed up the whole thing is.

Phillip gets accused of kidnapping the actor because they went off without permission from his daughter and it seems like they didn't tell her. It's a decent trip of trains, boats, then walking so it's long. The employees of the company decide to pretend to be lawyers to sort out things with the daughter, only to have a police officer show up. It's the company owner, pretending to be police to do the same thing.

The employees each break out of what they've been doing and see it for the damage it does. The company stays in business but without some of the less savory things they were doing. Specifically the owner tells a potential customer they no longer do Apology Service. 

I honestly can't remember what happens to Phillip and the job. The movie ends on something that was part of the actor's storyline which makes sense given the contemplative nature of the movie.

It's a melancholy movie. The only person who is actually happy is the little girl for a while when she thinks her father is back in her life, and that gets ruined too. I guess the actor got to take his trip, so that was good for him. The whole movie is about a closed society and relationship dynamics. It doesn't translate well outside of the Japanese culture because they have such a fossilized social system that most other places don't. I don't go for that "human experience" thing because the experience is based on the humans, and both of those change for context.

It's a good enough watch. It will draw you in to the stories to a certain amount. There's just a lot of storylines to juggle so none of them really get explored. Even Phillip's story isn't really there.

The Running Man - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I've read the book so I know the story. That doesn't mean I'm not going to try to enjoy a retelling of it. Book adaptations are rarely identical to the source material. That's what makes them adaptations. Stephen King stories can be particularly challenging because of how much is what happens in the characters' heads, which does not lend itself to a visual medium.

We know the outline. Man goes on the show to get money for his sick family. He has encounters along his time trying to stay ahead of everyone trying to kill him. He takes down the system. It's not a bad outline and it works for action movies or they wouldn't keep doing it.

In this telling Ben Richards has been blacklisted from pretty much any employment due to things like trying to form unions. He's A Good Guy who just wants to make life better for his family. While he's on the couch, due to quite literally not being able to get a job, he's watching the game shows and how much money people win on them. There's not just The Running Man. There's a variety of games designed to humiliate the players for the viewers' amusement and some cash. Cash? Credits? Whatever.

He decides to audition for one of the low risk shows. The wife is concerned. He assures her he's not going for the brass ring - The Running Man. He gets in line and goes through the audition process. Turns out they run through the audition process to find out what show best suits the person, if any. Ben, of course, ends up chosen for The Running Man along with two others.

He's hesitant but there's a graduating return scale based on how long he stays alive during the thirty days and how many of the show's Hunters he takes out. So his wife will get the money she needs for medicine for their sick child no matter what. They even put his family into their version of witness protection because it seems they've had situations where people have gone after player's families. He signs on the bottom line but is full of righteous fury about it.

OK. Onto the running and the head start. He stops by someone he knows who does electronic and other repairs to get some equipment, including weapons. He's got a stupidly obvious watch-type thing that counts down how long until his next video needs to be mailed. Then he's off and Running.

The bulk of the movie is him trying to not get killed, killing a couple of Hunters more or less by accident, and finding people out there who are willing to help him. One of those is a conspiracy theory podcaster who fills him in on some of the things about the game. They always choose three people - the quick kill, the overconfident mid game kill, and the one who will go near the distance. The podcaster helps him get to the boonies where he can wait out the clock. Calendar. Game.

Nope. Doesn't work out that way. He's ratted out by someone who wants the reward so he's off and Running again. He ends up taking a hostage when he's trying to get to the border (I think?) who goes from brainless network fangirl to seeing the larger issue underneath. She ends up helping him get to the next, and final, phase.

He demands a plane, he gets a plane. He's got the top Hunter with him. Woo. This is where it all comes crashing down on him. The smarmy network guy tells him his family has been killed, then offers him a deal to have his own show, hunting down people. Cue some angst. Cue the top Hunter trying to do the hunting thing. Turns out, gasp, that guy is the one who lasted the longest in The Long Run and was offered the job on the show. It's all rigged!

Ben reveals all of this to his now adoring fans. The network audience gets riotous. There's rioting all over. The network executive gets to find out what happens when the crowd turns against you. Ben flies the plane into the building. He's a martyr.

I believe the book leaves it open as to whether or not he survived the plane crash. The movie does not. They show him taking out network stuff and hooking up with his family, now in a tidy area of the city, so there's the happy ending that's necessary for The Good Guy.

It's a fun action movie if you like those. There's banter. There's some things that someone who's not special ops trained shouldn't be able to do but does anyway. There's characters to like and ones to dislike. Overall it's got the mix right and it's exactly what you should expect from the trailers.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I liked the first movie of the series and never got around to watching the second one, a situation I rectified before seeing this one. I liked the second one, by the way.

I'll get this out of the way because it bothers me greatly. The movie starts with a warning that there will be flashing lights and such for those people who are bothered by them. I'd be pissed if I were one of those people, bought my ticket, and then found out about this. They used to post signs in the lobby about it and I feel it should be noted in the online/app ordering as well.

This is what you can expect from one of the series - rather implausible situations where everything is pre-planned and goes perfectly. Of course, if you expect anything else you're watching the wrong movie series. This just takes it into slightly more absurd territory.

They're obviously ready to continue the franchise, weaning us off the existing characters, with a few new magicians. Younger ones, of course. They're big into the use of technology along with traditional magic so that gives more options for situations.

They're still The Horsemen. They still go after bad guys and drain their bank accounts. Nothing new there. They get an assignment, they do it. This time it's a thinly veiled DeBeers-like diamond mining family. The heiress is an icy blonde who, shocker, hates magic. Nope. I couldn't make that one up. The goal is for them to steal the signature diamond that just happens to be taken out of decades long storage in a secret Arabian buried vault for some event.

The secret Arabian buried vault. Seriously. It's set in the middle of the desert. There's two armed guards at the entrance. There's a high security keypad. There's the mandatory long elevator ride down to the vault. There's more security stuff. Sheesh. This one set piece is so, well, outré that I give it its own "WTF?" for whoever approved it.

Anyway.

They go to some special house out in the English countryside that's full of old magic tricks and history. They find the information they need to do their job. They use the magic stuff to confuse the police who the bad lady arranged to arrest them. Yeah yeah.

They do social engineering to get to the diamond, crash the fancy ball to do the close up magic to get it and such, use the company's F1 car to distract (that's why they're in the desert where the vault is), get caught, get dropped into a deathtrap, get out of the deathtrap, and eventually foil the bad guy. Or girl, in this case.

One of the new kids is revealed to be the half brother of the evil lady who she thought she killed when she killed his mother, who was obviously fooling around with their father. He's the rightful heir. Yeah yeah.

They do the reveals of how they did all the tricks and that's where you have to suspend disbelief. Things like knowing exactly what the secured display for the diamond looks like so they can duplicate it to their needs, faking her out into thinking she's going to the vault, etc. It makes for interesting cinema and showing how everything has to work perfectly. But it has to work perfectly or none of it works and that's where the movies show their cracks.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. It's pretty much what I expected. Did I find it required me to force myself not to get angry at the incredible sequences of events that had to happen? Also yes. The acting was fine. The new characters to continue the franchise are fine.

I'm not unhappy that I saw the movie. I'll go see the next one, because I know there will be a next one. I will not be doing a movie marathon of these three because I've seen the tricks and how they work. That makes rewatching them rather pointless.